12-13 Biggest Surprise

Speed, youth, experience. You really expect Emmerton to score 50 pts with Holmstrom and Abdelkader for 8 minutes a night? Cory is fast. He will improve this year.

Experience compared to which players he would be competing against? Mursak is young and faster if those are Emmerton's best assets. I don't expect Emmerton to put up big numbers playing on the 4th line, but that further elaborates my point really. His offensive ceiling isn't high enough to assume a bigger role and ideally you would like your 4th line to do something other than nothing, which is what the Red Wings got last season. Putting Abdelkader at center, adding Tootoo to the mix, plus having Eaves/Miller as well gives you a useful 4th line that actually provides energy while also having the ability to contribute offensively. Emmerton is solely a skill player, with minimal skill.

I agree with the OP on the Kindl thing. Everybody is down on him because they can't be down on Ericsson anymore. For years Ericsson was the whipping boy and nobody noticed how good he was on the PK until he was injured and Babcock made it clear that the the failure of the PK was largely due to Ericsson's injury. As soon as that happened everybody jumped ship and started chiding Kindl, as if our seventh defenseman was somehow to blame for last season.

My guess is Kindl continues his develpment, comes into his own, and nobody notices for another year or two, until he's injured and his services are noticeable. Then it will be someone else's turn.

I think a big reason a lot of people are down on Kindl is that he was a first-round pick, supposedly good offensively in juniors. and 7 years after being drafted, he hasn't shown the ability to even hold down a regular shift, let alone any offensive flair.

I think a big reason a lot of people are down on Kindl is that he was a first-round pick, supposedly good offensively in juniors. and 7 years after being drafted, he hasn't shown the ability to even hold down a regular shift, let alone any offensive flair.

Sure, and I'm not setting here saying he's a superstar or anything. All I'm saying is that Kindl wasn't nearly as bad last year as everyone made it seem. And I'm expecting better for him in the coming season. He may never be a top two guy, but I think he could easily be a top four with a little more development, and he's certainly better than he's been portrayed here at LGW

Experience compared to which players he would be competing against? Mursak is young and faster if those are Emmerton's best assets. I don't expect Emmerton to put up big numbers playing on the 4th line, but that further elaborates my point really. His offensive ceiling isn't high enough to assume a bigger role and ideally you would like your 4th line to do something other than nothing, which is what the Red Wings got last season. Putting Abdelkader at center, adding Tootoo to the mix, plus having Eaves/Miller as well gives you a useful 4th line that actually provides energy while also having the ability to contribute offensively. Emmerton is solely a skill player, with minimal skill.

A surprise would be if Emmerton somehow even makes the team.

He simply brings nothing desirable....so what if he can skate good?....if everyone who could skate good made NHL teams, me and all my buddies would be slappin pucks with Toots next season. Bottom sixers need to bring to the table what the top sixers dont.....size, grit, fighting, hitting, penalty killing, whatever.....Cory is a top 6 type player, he doesn't have the skill set or the assets to be in an NHL bottom 6.....unfortunately for him he doesn't have the level of skill that is required of a top sixer. Thus he'll prolly be a top sixer in a lesser league for most of his career. It sucks that he didn't work out, but they can't all workout....For every Emmerton that fails, a Nyquist succeeds......I was never really ever high on Emmerton anyway, never thought he was anything special....and what that tells me is that if he can get the amount of time that he got on this team, then I've very excited for our other prospects who I'm actually excited about and who actually might be something special lol. Good things to come.

Because other teams have a need and could use him better than we could. You don't drop one of your prospects to waivers for no return value, especially when you know they wouldn't pass through waivers... it's a pretty simple logic here.

Because other teams have a need and could use him better than we could. You don't drop one of your prospects to waivers for no return value, especially when you know they wouldn't pass through waivers... it's a pretty simple logic here.

They could try to slip him through, but he'd get picked up. If I recall correctly, we lost Quincey originally because teams knew we'd put him on waivers if we couldn't trade him, so they wouldn't do the deal.

I think that the the surprise of 12/13 will be the fact that Ken Holland was not able to fill the holes in the Wings line up. Ken Holland has not let us as fans down yet but this is not looking so good so far. Losing Nick and Stuart in the same year will hurt this team much more then some realize. I just hope I am wrong.

Because other teams have a need and could use him better than we could. You don't drop one of your prospects to waivers for no return value, especially when you know they wouldn't pass through waivers... it's a pretty simple logic here.

We have zero use for him....hes the worst forward on a team overloaded with forwards....and hes not going to develop into a top 6er, that much is obvious....thats business...bye bye cory

Agree on the not top 6er. Disagree on your pessimism about him fitting in. Hes fast, and speed kills. Thats the reason Babs got him 71 games last year. And thats the reason he will play in front of others. Only 600k per, too. Crazy how all you can only express negativity around these parts if it falls inline with popular opinion

Agree on the not top 6er. Disagree on your pessimism about him fitting in. Hes fast, and speed kills. Thats the reason Babs got him 71 games last year. And thats the reason he will play in front of others. Only 600k per, too. Crazy how all you can only express negativity around these parts if it falls inline with popular opinion

I won't lie I'm definitely a pessimist with Emmerton. I'm not falling in line with popular opinion though, I'm basing that off what I saw in those 71 games. I'm usually an optimist about all of our guys....I even believe Kindl will be good one day and thats not popular around here at all....But Emmerton showed nothing in those 71 games....not even a small flash of anything. And we have plenty of other forwards to go with.....

Also it doesn't really help that all the scouts are calling him a career minor leaguer

So we dont want to let another team get him. We play him in 85% of the games, and he's 24 years old with one season under his belt. Why again are we not interested in his development??

Agree on the not top 6er. Disagree on your pessimism about him fitting in. Hes fast, and speed kills. Thats the reason Babs got him 71 games last year. And thats the reason he will play in front of others. Only 600k per, too. Crazy how all you can only express negativity around these parts if it falls inline with popular opinion

Let's not present certain stats as meaning something they don't. Emmerton was in 71 games, this is true. But in those 71 games he averaged 8mins of ice time per game - by far the lowest of any regular player. The only semi regular, Jan Mursak, who had fewer mins per game was Jan Mursak who only played in 25 games. Emmerton played as often as he did this year because the Wings were intent on playing both Fil and Abdelkader on the wing as much as humanly possible this year which left them with little depth down the middle.

I'm not trying to pile on and say Emmerton is worse than he is but he certainly was not strong last year. With the glut of forwards this year, assuming Emmerton some how made the roster, he would not see consistent ice time as Abdelkader will be centering line 4. This of course is assuming no trades happen.

Let's not present certain stats as meaning something they don't. Emmerton was in 71 games, this is true. But in those 71 games he averaged 8mins of ice time per game - by far the lowest of any regular player. The only semi regular, Jan Mursak, who had fewer mins per game was Jan Mursak who only played in 25 games. Emmerton played as often as he did this year because the Wings were intent on playing both Fil and Abdelkader on the wing as much as humanly possible this year which left them with little depth down the middle.

I'm not trying to pile on and say Emmerton is worse than he is but he certainly was not strong last year. With the glut of forwards this year, assuming Emmerton some how made the roster, he would not see consistent ice time as Abdelkader will be centering line 4. This of course is assuming no trades happen.

Agree on the not top 6er. Disagree on your pessimism about him fitting in. Hes fast, and speed kills. Thats the reason Babs got him 71 games last year. And thats the reason he will play in front of others. Only 600k per, too. Crazy how all you can only express negativity around these parts if it falls inline with popular opinion

Define these "others" that Emmerton will dress ahead of assuming the full group of forwards are healthy. The Red Wings have an excess of forwards as it is and Emmerton is the worst of the bunch.

It isn't really popular opinion. It's most sensible fans recognizing that Emmerton offers very little to the team.

Why? because he's fast? He's not that fast... Mursak will probably get shipped out because we have so many forwards and Mursak is the same size as cory, the same age as cory, the same contract as cory, but muchhhhh faster than cory....... and actually has hands too

Why? because he's fast? He's not that fast... Mursak will probably get shipped out because we have so many forwards and Mursak is the same size as cory, the same age as cory, the same contract as cory, but muchhhhh faster than cory....... and actually has hands too

Fragile Jan? Cory is ahead on depth chart. Hes ahead of miller and eaves too. He will play. Watch.

Ahead of Miller and Eaves? The two best penalty-killing forwards after Helm and also two players that will/have easily outscore(d) Emmerton too? Miller was a huge part of the third line being very successful when Helm was healthy last season and Eaves is more than capable of doing the same as well.

The only forward I would maybe consider Emmerton ahead of right now is Brunner and that's only because he has never played a shift in the NHL. Even so, his potential is more exciting than whatever Emmerton provides (nothing).